In early 2019, Project Impact 2 will launch — this time backed by the private sector. This project is a nationwide campaign with the goal of engaging community leaders and the public to tackle future impacts of increasingly frequent and severe weather events and climate change.

This initiative will provide the vehicle to create a community coalition, establish a process and blueprint for action within the community, and facilitate access to resources to implement community risk reduction actions.

Recovery planning requires substantial analysis and public debate of difficult tradeoffs as decisions are made about how to encourage economic stabilization and development, how to sustain cleanup and restoration of natural systems, what cost-effective hazard mitigation strategies to implement, and how to ensure equitable and just solutions for even the most vulnerable members of affected communities. Recovery efforts need to be carefully sequenced to avoid bottlenecks, enhance efficiency, minimize frustration, and build communities more able to withstand future disasters.

The flood insurance program was separated from the larger government spending bill earlier this year as part of a deal to keep it alive through hurricane season while leaders in Washington fought over other, more partisan parts of the appropriations bill.

The Tri-State Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership-based organization that serves as the forum where organizations from the Southeast Indiana-Northern Kentucky-Southwest Ohio Region share knowledge and resources throughout the disaster cycle—preparation, response and recovery —to help disaster survivors and their communities.

Not-for-profit organizations eligible for membership include those having commitment and resources to meet the needs of people, without discrimination, affected by disaster. Local and regional government agencies having similar commitment and resources are encouraged to become affiliate members.

The next Congress must do what the current Congress has not: hold the administration accountable and ensure that low-income disaster survivors are provided with stable, affordable homes so they can recover. It’s the least we can do for fellow Americans who have lost so much

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has directed far less resources to helping California cope with the devastating Camp Fire than it typically sends to states dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane, or other natural disasters. But experts say that’s by design, as California’s robust disaster response planning and operations make the feds less necessary in the early stages of fighting a disaster.